Movie Review: Rush

Rush is a biopic drama based on the real-life rivalry between the famous Formula One drivers James Hunt and Niki Lauda during the 1976 Formula One season. First and foremost, I'm not a Formula 1 fan as I find the sport uninteresting and I don't know much about the sport itself. But, I find myself drawn into this film.

Different than many typical racing sports film found out there, Rush actually shows the clash between two distinctive, contrasting personalities, the passion that brought them into the sport and fears that come with it. James Hunt is a highly sociable British playboy who loves to live life dangerously close to death, have the willingness to do whatever it takes to win, a seemingly typical F1 driver. On the other hand, Niki Lauda is an eccentric, methodical, disciplined, and seemingly unsociable perfectionist, constantly assessing the odds and potential risks and outcome of things.

Watching these two characters constantly pushing their limits to be the world's best racer and what drives them to win truly makes this a very engaging, entertaining, interesting drama to watch.With a great chracter-driven script by Peter Morgan, brilliant direction by Ron Howard, good acting performances by the two leads to provide impressive character depth and gripping, intense score composed by Han Zimmer (again), the film successfully carefully showed both personas in detail, allowing the audience to draw out the differences between these two men, in terms of personal values and beliefs and how they eventually develop mutual respect for the other by the end of the film.

Technically speaking, it seems like Lauda is the better driver as he knows the specifics, modification, requirements of a Formula 1 car compared to James, but James' bold and determined personality also shows that he's a good driver who certainly deserves respect. The racing scenes in the film was intense and beautifully filmed. The injuries sustained by Lauda during the Nurburging crash in 1976 looks about the same in real-life. It's definitely a compelling drama worth watching, not to be missed.

Rating: 8.5/10

"When I saw it the first time I was impressed. There was no Hollywood changes or things changed a little bit Hollywood-like. It is very accurate. And this really surprised me very positively." -Niki Lauda (Carjam TV Interview, September, 2013)


The following shows the images of the people in the film and what they look like in real-life:
Taken from the site: http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/rush.php